The personal blog of Peter Nikolaidis
HELO TC Assault
Company: Griffin Technology
Price: $59.99
Every now and then I get a chance to play with a cool new toy. Usually, by “new cool toy” I’m referring to some computer-related tool, self-defense weapon, firearm, or bicycle. This time, it’s a genuine toy. I’m referring to the Griffin HELO TC Assault remote control helicopter.
Continue reading “Review: Griffin HELO TC Assault”
OS X Mountain Lion Pocket Guide
The Ultimate Quick Guide to OS X
Author: Chris Seibold
Publisher: O’Reilly Media
Released: July 2012
Pages: 272
Price: $14.99 US
I recently had the opportunity to review a copy of the OS X Mountain Lion Pocket Guide from O’Reilly media. Continue reading “Review: Mac OS X Mountain Lion Pocket Guide”
I had the opportunity to review the iBike Phone Booth, a bike mount for the iPhone, and iBike Coach, a cycling computer app for the iPhone. Continue reading “Review: iBike Coach and iBike Phone Booth”
(Originally posted on the Paradigm Consulting blog.)
Whether it’s fair, or not, people judge you by the words you use, spoken and written. This applies to electronic communication as well and, while the accepted norms for grammar are being relaxed more and more every day, f u typ lik ths n a prof ltr, ul look like a ful. Continue reading “Type Like a Teenager, Communicate Like a Professional”
What would my inbox be like without my old AOL account?
How are you doing? I am Anastasya. i look for a gentleman. i commonly am tidy, paint… Reply me email in [email protected] Yours, Anastasya…
That’s great! I am looking for a woman who commonly is tidy, paint…
Seriously, it scares me to think that things like this work as openers to social engineering and Nigerian scams that end up robbing people of not only time and money, but sometimes even their lives. Be careful out there.
Today I worked on the system of a client who reported the computer was crashing. After briefly examining the logs, I found that the system had been reporting hard drive failures… for nearly a year.
The system was crashing with the infamous Blue Screen of Death, and running terrifically slow. Given that the computer itself was 6 years old, slow was to be expected, but this was slow. It took many minutes just to get to the logon prompt, longer to get to rendering a desktop, etc.
So, I had to ask myself, “how much is this costing them?” Let’s do a quick calculation:
An employee uses this PC, and sits at the machine for approximately 4 hours a day out of a typical 8 hour workday. For round numbers, let’s say that said employee costs the company $25/hour (after salary, benefits, taxes, etc.). Let’s also be generous and say that the machine was taking 25% longer to perform all tasks, on average. In reality, it was probably taking much longer, but let’s err on the low side.
So 4 hours at the desk, and 25% (1 hour) of that is wasted waiting for the PC. $25 a day * 5 days a week = $125 / week. Multiply this times 50 weeks out of the year and we can easily make the case that this slowness cost our client $6,250 a year in lost employee productivity.
Cost of a new computer, installed, with a new software suite and employee training? Significantly less.
How much money are you and your staff wasting by not upgrading your old computer?
In the last week of May, 2012 I started a low carb diet. This is not my first attempt at such a thing, as I successfully lost 45 pounds following a program called Medifast in 2008, and I experimented with the slow carb diet for a couple of months in 2011. While I am not necessarily looking to lose weight this time around, I do want more energy and would like to tone up some. Since moving to Boston, I have increased my regular exercise regime to where I am doing some form of exercise pretty much every day, whether it is yoga, martial arts, or cycling.
However, I was feeling quite exhausted on occasion, most likely as a result of not yet changing my diet.
I have not adopted a formal diet this time, preferring instead to “trust my gut” and see what happens. While I am not counting calories, I am consciously choosing to intake fewer carbohydrates, which is difficult for me, as I miss my popcorn and potatoes. However, I have noticed that after eating a big meal, by skipping the potatoes with dinner, I do not feel “stuffed” to the point of needing a wheelchair to leave the dinner table. Rather, I feel comfortably satisfied.
I am allowing myself to eat all of the protein that I want, whether it is beef, fish, poultry, etc., does not matter. I am also increasing my daily intake of vegetables. So far, the resulting diet has been rather similar to the slow carb diet, minus the weekly “binge day,” and allowing for some occasional, albeit small, doses of carbs, e.g., a slice or two of Ezekiel bread every few days.
For the first week, my energy levels definitely dropped, which is to be expected when you first start something like this. However, now that I am in the second week, they seem to be coming back. I don’t know if my weight has changed yet, as I will have to wait until returning to Vermont, where my scale is, but I do seem to be getting a little more muscle definition already.
Passware Password Kit Forensic 11.5
Publisher: Passware, Inc.
Price: $995
Product Page
This month, I obtained a review copy of Passware’s “Passware Password Kit Forensic 11.5”. For brevity’s sake, I’ll refer to it as “Passware” for the rest of this review. Passware is a password recovery/cracking system which has the ability to work on multiple file types. The Forensic Kit version adds more features, such as cracking of filesystem passwords and resetting Windows user account passwords. Continue reading “Passware Password Kit Forensic 11.5 – Software Review”
peter@localhost:~$ sudo apt-get install coffee
[sudo] password for peter:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
coffee caffeine caffeine-bin-common caffeine-common
coffee-common libgcoffee2-4
Suggested packages:
aspartame cinnamon-powder cocoa-powder espresso
half-and-half milk nutmeg-powder saccharine skim-milk
stevia sucralose sugar vanilla-powder
The following NEW packages will be installed:
coffee caffeine caffeine-bin-common caffeine-common
coffee-common libgcoffee2-4
0 upgraded, 6 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 30.7 MB/31.1 MB of archives.
After this operation, 107 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? Y
I get frustrated… a lot. Not genuinely angry, mind you, but suffice to say people often do things that tick me off. For the next 30 days, I will take a different approach. Instead of getting angry or frustrated immediately, I will make my best effort to say “hmm, that’s interesting,” and understand what led to my frustration, as well as the other person’s actions.
As I write this, I see that this is a version of Stephen Covey’s “seek first to understand” habit.
And, I am now typing this on my iPhone 4S, rather than dictating to Siri, who has very interestingly stopped processing my input.
Hmm… That’s interesting. Off to a good start!